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The Taos Indians and the Battle for Blue Lake by R. C. Gordon-McCutchan (review)
- Western American Literature
- The Western Literature Association
- Volume 27, Number 2, Summer 1992
- p. 167
- 10.1353/wal.1992.0179
- Review
- Additional Information
Reviews 167 Unavoidably, this somber news casts a pall over Halsey’s story. The reader cannot help but armchair-analyze Halsey’s moments of feeling “superhuman with a strength derived from the elements” as symptoms of mania; and his frequent periods “haunted by self-doubt,”that of depression. Furthermore, the reader is left to question whether this gruellingjourney was, in fact, “stabilizing and healing” for Halsey, or whether it aggravated his illness. Either way, David Halsey’s story, both of hisjourney and his life, is one not easily resolved. JOHN A. KINCH Michigan State University The TaosIndians and theBattleforBlueLake. By R. C. Gordon-McCutchan. (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Red Crane Books, 1991. 236 pages, $25.95.) The Taos Indians fought a crucial and unprecedented battle for Blue Lake and its surrounding watershed because it had been their spiritual home and center of their religion for seven centuries. This pivotal argument was central to their resistance to settle for anything less than complete control over the region. The pueblo had long disputed the Blue Lake boundaries and had fought grazing and timber interests, fishermen, tourists, and litter on sites they considered sacred. Their primary opposition, the Forest Service and New Mexico’s senator Clinton P. Anderson, who accused the pueblo of wanting to exploit the watershed’s natural resources, resolutely campaigned against the Blue Lake bill (H.R. 471) until it finally passed December 2, 1970. R. C. Gordon-McCutchan sets out to tell the story of this convoluted, 60year legal struggle in a book which focuses on the positive. GordonMcCutchan ’s story, however, emphasizes the Taos Indians’non-native enemies and advocates. The pueblo councilman, Seferino Martinez, for example, whose story is embedded in a chapter the author titles “The LaFarge Era,”only begins to emerge as a complex, and often intensely contradictory, personality. The author’s discretion regarding members of the tribe is no doubt an effort to preserve the tribe’s privacy, but what happens is that the native Americans once again become a subtext in a larger narrative. The slightly artificial chapter headings do little to sufficiently organize this unwieldy and sometimes painfully detailed account of political maneuvering and legislative debate. In the end, the book stands more as a monument to the struggle and the people involved than a work which provides new insight into the nature of cultural maintenance or political self-determination. LYNN COTHERN George Washington University ...